Memoriam St. Anthony of the Desert, Abbott Dominican Chant/Rite

St. Anthony is the favorite Saint of my favorite Saint, St. Athanasius, Patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt. St. Anthony lived from 285 to 365 AD.  As such he experienced the Apostolic Church of Martyrs of the First and Second Centuries and in 312 the Edict of Milan, first Official Tolerance and then Establishment of Catholicism as the official religion of the Roman Empire now under the auspices of the first Catholic Emperor, Constantine the Great. With the best of intentions (my grandmother Gertrude always said the road to Hell is paved with good intentions) Constantine ended persecution of the Catholic Church at various times and places in the Roman Empire by previous Emperors such as first Nero and finally Diocletian. Leaving the Pope behind in Rome when Constantine moved the center of the Empire to Constantinople- formerly a fifth century BC Greek colony Byzantium, Constantine without malice with the best of intentions manufactured the heresy of ceasaropapism where as emperor he is defender and head of the official religion just as it was with the official Roman gods and Nero and Diocletian persecuting disloyal Catholics refusing to burn incense to the  gods. St. Anthony at 18 went into the desert surrounding the Egyptian Nile Delta around Alexandria. In the Life Of Anthony, St. Athanasius portrays Anthony's battle against Satan and his minions through prayer, fasting, and self-sacrifice in Divine Service of God. St. Anthony emerges from the catecombs analogously resurrected here and now in Holiness to be the Patriarch-Abbott- of Monks a rule giver unto holiness. The Rules' chanting 150 Psalms has the Mass as the anchor for the monks common life . St. Benedict two hundred years later having gone East would transplant the Rules of Anthony and St. Basil the Great West to Italia through The Rule of St. Benedict.